Breach at Indian Airline SpiceJet Affects 1.2 Million Passengers

SpiceJet, one of India's largest privately owned airlines, suffered a data breach involving the details of more than a million of its passengers, a security researcher told TechCrunch. From the report: The security researcher, who described their actions as "ethical hacking" but whom we are not naming as they likely fell afoul of U.S. computer hacking laws, gained access to one of SpiceJet's systems by brute-forcing the system's easily guessable password. An unencrypted database backup file on that system contained private information of more than 1.2 million passengers of the budget-carrier last month, TechCrunch has learned. Each record included details such as name of the passenger, their phone number, email address and their date of birth, the researcher told TechCrunch. Some of these passengers were state officials, they said. The database included a rolling month's worth of flight information and details of each commuter, they said, adding that they believe that the database was easily accessible for anyone who knew where to look.

Are you good or not so good?

[AndyKron]

If you've done nothing wrong there's no need to worry, right?

Re:

[Aighearach]

They use the term "ethical hacking" because everybody already knows that if you exfiltrate data you're not a "White Hat."

This is odd.

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't even know there were 1.2M Indians who could afford to fly. Considering how they they have no problem using their rivers as a toilet, do they shit in the aisles too?

Re:This is odd.

[Nidi62]

According to IATA, India is the fastest-growing aviation market in the world, and is currently the world's third-largest domestic/civil aviation market, with 131 million passengers in 2016 and an estimated 800 commercial aircraft in service by this year.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't even know there were 1.2M Indians who could afford to fly.

India has a population of 1.4 billion people. You think that less than one in a thousand can afford to fly? The middle class of India consists of a population larger than the entire population of the United States.

Just because there are a large number of people in India who are poor, doesn't mean that there isn't also a a large number who are not poor.

Considering how they they have no problem using their rivers as a toilet, do they shit in the aisles too?

Considering that Americans in some cities use their streets as a toilet, do you think Americans shit in the aisles, too?

Re:

[Aighearach]

OK, now look up what airplanes from [your country] do with the shit? Do they just dump it on whatever they're flying over? (hint: yes)

Have you ever walked into an Indian toilet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just say the co-mingling of stinking feces and hot curry is NOT an "aroma" to experience unless you have a superhuman constitution. I have seen grizzled men-of-arms stagger out gasping for breath after walking into such a place. A billy goat that somehow had wandered into one suffocated to death after not being able to escape the toxic miasma permeating the air. I would expect no different from a festering SpiceJet.

SpiceJet?

[nospam007]

That's hot news right there.

The Spice Data Must Flow.

[Fly Swatter]

Now where'd I put my nose hose.